


Light

by cruentum



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-18
Updated: 2013-08-18
Packaged: 2017-12-23 22:48:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/931991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cruentum/pseuds/cruentum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>summerpornathon 2013 entry. Merlin hangs around waiting, frozen some of the time, and then finds Arthur in a dark place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Light

**Author's Note:**

> written for challenge 6 of the Merlin summerpornathon 2013: Light and Dark

A thousand years have passed, and the Royal offspring isn't Arthur (Merlin did the sniff test, which... awkward, and the baby smelled of baby, not destiny). Times aren't dire enough yet then, even as the water is lapping higher on the shores and the markets are dropping lower. Merlin hangs around another five hundred years, Arthur's never been the most reliable, but as technology is advancing, Merlin decides to throw himself into it.

DeepFreeze has him walk into a crystal cave of his own making. It'd be dumb luck if he missed him in the meantime but he trusts fate and dragon promises that, well, he'd know somehow.

When they unlock him, the world is a little darker and a little more sullen, pouting at everything at the drop of a hat and kicking a hurricane here, floods there and fire the next day. It gets dark early and stays dark most of the day, the sun not making it through the smog to reach them down below. People walk with headlamps and torches, glow-in-the-dark clothes with patterns for fashion and blinking colours for accessories. Merlin just walks in the dark.

He looks through the news for the royals (gone) and the people in charge (none scream Arthur), and then he just walks the streets, alone between glimmers of brightness. 

A woman talks to him about the kind of love that only exists once in a lifetime, as he settles on a bench that no bus ever stops at with another few poor souls who look a little worse for wear, lamps barely blinking.

The city isn't Camelot from then, nor is it London from later. He sleeps in doorways and eats scraps, keeping his eyes open and his nose sniffing for something that's a bit of what he was promised.

All the shit and then all the glory, it had boiled down to, but he's been wading for millennia now (well, frozen for some of it, who could blame him for a short cut). He's a bit sick of sniffing shit, and he's a bit lonely. He touches himself sometimes. He could get laid but everyone seems in a hurry to disappear back into the dark while he has too much time on his hands.

He gets drawn in by a shop on the corner. It glows bright with fixtures for heads and hands and legs, with clothes that throw light far onto the sidewalks. He slips inside as someone steps out, but there is little room to melt into a corner here if he doesn't go for a bit of magic.

He doesn't, not when the light sinks into his bones.

Merlin stands between two displays, looking like the man who got defrosted and spit out by time, with spotlights on him, while Arthur is on the other side of the shop floor, light reflecting off his hair. He is only oblivious for a moment (a minute, maybe two) longer.

"You're selling lights," Merlin says when Arthur stands in front of him. He leans and sniffs (no shit).

"People need lights."

"I need you. You're..." He wants to say, "my light," and settles on, "late," for the heck of it. Both are true.

When Arthur comes up from the shop floor later, Merlin stands at the window in the dark and watches people below glowing like fireflies in a cold world. Arthur steps up behind him, undresses him and turns on the lights. They kiss, and Merlin doesn't dare close his eyes as he runs his hands over Arthur's body, to his cock, takes him in hand and in mouth. Arthur glows. Merlin braces himself against the window as Arthur puts one, then two fingers into him and fucks him slowly for everyone on the streets below to see. He slips his cock in after, all the way, and fucks into him.

"Everyone carries a bit of light into the world for me," Arthur says, thrusts hard enough to have Merlin moan and fog the glass with his breath, fireflies barely visible beyond. "I've been waiting for you to find me."

Merlin keeps his eyes open until the brightness of the lamps leaves spots in his eyes, pulling on his cock until he smears the glass. "I've been stuck in the dark for too long," he says and laughs and comes (he's been saving it for a thousand years).

"No more," Arthur says.

Well, he's got a whole shop floor of lights after all.


End file.
